


i'm ready to lose (everything but you)

by selfishashell



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Christmas, F/F, Gen, canon-typical references to alcohol throughout, discussion of the canon s3 death of a character, is that a thing? can i count that as a thing?, pre-incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 13:24:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17264972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/selfishashell/pseuds/selfishashell
Summary: Wynonna has only one line, and she’s drawn it in the sand, built walls and towers and moats around it, installed a damn smart home security system and lasers and probably a safe to protect it: Waverly fucking lives.or, wynonna struggles to find waverly a present, and waverly and wynonna get honest on christmas night.





	i'm ready to lose (everything but you)

**Author's Note:**

> first of all, things to watch out for: canon-typical references to alcohol consumption, one blink-and-you-miss-it reference to prescription drugs, some references to and discussion around the canon s3 death of a character (still bitter, also kind of wanted to process) and then i'm calling it pre-incest. like i said in the tags, there's no overt Romance TM, so, i mean, it's totally your prerogative to read this however you want. it's definitely about wynonna loving waverly more than she'll ever love anybody.
> 
> i've been working on an outline for a waverly/wynonna fic that will be a much bigger undertaking, but i wanted to be able to finish something, so here's my post-s3 emotions dump, set during the christmas after the one in s3. (it's still new years, so that's not too late to post christmas fic, right? cool.) also, i'm taking everything in the s3 finale as canon, but vaguely handwaving them having gotten waverly (and doc) back, etc. etc. shhh don't look behind the curtain.

If Wynonna were to build a resume—special skills include: demon murder, dramatic entrances, clinging to a mechanical bull seven shots deep, banter with the forces of evil—gift giving would fall nowhere near that list. In fact, there’d be several dimensions and a shitload of universes to cross before you even made it to a neighboring galaxy  
  
Christmas has always been great. At least—Christmas has always been something to hold on to. But the gifts she gives out usually come in a shot glass and in the form of her glowing personality, gift wrap strictly optional.  
  
This year, there’s just one hiccup in her rounds-of-barely-passable-tequila plan: Waverly.

Waverly, who deserves more than this demon-infested nightmare of a town (revenant citizens or not: the human variety of demon is hardly better, and also never does anyone the service of cleaning up their own crime scenes post-murder) could ever offer her, who deserves at least a functioning dishwasher, who definitely deserves more than a shot of tequila. Even good tequila.

“Happen to have any ‘thanks for helping me stop a few apocalypses so we could all make it to this Christmas alive’ cards?” she mutters, staring down the measly selection of cards Purgatory’s general store has on offer. 

“What was that?” asks the apparently nearby employee – some dude with a beard Wynonna’s probably seen around before, because she’s seen everyone around before, because it’s Purgatory. (Whoever he is, she’s pretty sure she was never drunk enough to fuck him.)

“Uh, nevermind,” she says.  
  
The recon she’s been doing for the past week has gotten her nowhere—worse than nowhere, because now she has a half dozen very specific pieces of evidence that she’s wildly out of her depth.

Jeremy was easy: just broach the subject of presents and you end up with enough details about gift-shopping misadventures to fill the world’s most boring memoir. Main point: he’s donating money to adopting some animal half a world away—one of those programs where they send pictures about the animal and tell you about its eating habits or how many times a day they take a shit or—whatever it is, Waverly will be as charmed as anyone over age seventy watching a Clark Gable movie.

Then there’s Robin, who’s buying Waverly some tea set from Japan she’s apparently been swooning over. (Wynonna didn’t even have to interrogate him; Jeremy provided more than enough gift details to cover them both.)

Even Doc’s getting Waverly this nice-ass bottle of champagne—so nice it almost made Wynonna want to drink champagne _willingly_. She had to go full Lara Croft to hunt that one down, but there it was, sitting on a shelf in the basement, a tag tied to the neck that said something like _If anyone deserves a little celebration, it is most certainly you_.  
  
Nicole’s gift for Waverly is a necklace that makes Wynonna rethink the entire Purgatory police force—like, is that why there only ever seem to be about two of them on duty at a time, if their salary affords them jewelry that would’ve fit in comfortably on the _Titanic_? Swap it for the Hope Diamond, see if anyone notices a thing.

(It’s obscenely fucking beautiful. Disgustingly thoughtful. Waverly won’t know what to do with herself.)

Nicole’s also getting Waverly a blanket because she’s a damn show-off—apparently she did research about the “warmest blankets ever,” blah blah blah, microfiber, fleece, if Nicole had wanted her to pay any attention she wouldn’t have laid a necklace worth a small fortune out on the desk, like she was daring Wynonna to return to her B&E career days. Operation Ocean’s 2—just a girl and her big-ass gun.

(Or, well, her big-ass sword. She’s still getting used to that. A lot harder to shove down the back of your pants at a moment’s notice, and way less portable. Also? Not recommended for shaving. Not that she’d tried.

Okay, but only when there’d been no razor within reach.)  
  
She glowers at the cards a little longer before turning on heel and abandoning the whole mess. If she wanted a rhyme scheme that shitty, she wouldn’t need to fork over eight bucks (yeah, _eight_ —where the fuck has she been, and when did cards start costing more than meals?) to make it happen— _Roses are red, violets are blue, you’ve saved my life, we’ve been splattered in goo._

Honestly, how had she never gone into the greeting card business? Goddamn poetry.  
  
  
  
  
  
It sounds like a riddle: What do you get the only person in your life who’s given you a reason to live it? (Murder aside.)

It’s not until late that evening, wrapped tight in her Christmas onesie and working her way through both a bottle of whiskey and _It’s a Wonderful Life_ —somewhat disconsolately, like someone who’s found herself unexpectedly betrayed by Christmas, of all things—that she glances toward their tree.

“Holy craft night,” she says, suddenly.  
  
  
  
  
  
She nearly superglues her fingers together at least seventeen times, but in the end she thinks she can live with it.

Or she’ll burn it all down tomorrow, when she’s sober again and realizes this is the worst idea she’s ever had—including that time she tried to sneak firecrackers into St. Victoria’s through the plumbing, and also the time in Amsterdam she broke into the house of some billionaire with a serious nunchuk collection to steal his Vicodin. Whatever, everyone goes through phases.

She tucks it all into her closet, returns Menstruangel to the top of the tree, and tries to feel less nauseous about the whole thing.  
  
  
  
  
  
The gift Waverly hands Wynonna is both lovingly wrapped and massive, and it isn’t until that moment that Wynonna thinks about Waverly getting her a gift at all.

What she finds when she rips it open is a scabbard, like something out of a history book, or a museum—but just punk rock enough to exist in this century. It’s beautiful, magnificent, indescribable; it definitely deserves its own greeting card.

Also included are straps, so that suddenly Peacemaker is portable again.

“Holy shit, Waverly,” Wynonna says, wide-eyed, running her hand across the carvings etched along the side. “You sure this doesn’t belong in a museum somewhere?”

“No,” Waverly says, breathing an amused exhale when Wynonna presses a kiss to its side, “but I think you’ll make better use of it.”  
  
  
  
  
  
“Uh, you have to close your eyes. No peeking—one look and you’re dead, like that Sandra Bullock movie. You're Girl.”

“Dramatic,” Waverly says, but she’s smiling. Wynonna waves her hand in front of Waverly’s blindfold, which earns her no response. “If it’s a whiskey bottle you’re giving me because you want to drink it, you can just hand it over, you know.”

It’s the middle of the night—everyone else has gone home, even Nicole, and the lights of the Christmas tree glitter behind Waverly. There are a million too many dishes piled in the sink—Waverly decided she wanted to be a _proper_ hostess, and Wynonna even consented to stir a sauce or two—that she plans to ignore at least until the new year, and there’s wrapping paper strewn across the floor that hasn’t yet made it to the trash.

It’s nice—kind of warm, like a cheesefest of a Hallmark movie if you ever actually believed the people liked each other.

“Guess you don’t know me as well as you think,” Wynonna says, heading for the stairs, and Waverly snorts disbelievingly. She has cause, Wynonna knows—but that’s the whole point. That’s why she’s doing this. That’s why Waverly’s wrong.

“Just because I was wrong about you drugging me that one time,” Waverly protests, quieter now that Wynonna’s almost made it to the second floor. A pause. “…you’re not drugging me _this_ time, right?”

Wynonna breathes out a laugh. “I said Bird Box, not _Saw_. Wait, Murder Mask drugs them in Saw, right? To get them to his murder den?”  
  
“I kind of feel like he’d object to ‘murder den,’” Waverly notes. “It was pretty elaborate.”  
  
“Murder kingdom? Murder carnival? The 2004 Murder Games?” calls back.

 “So now I’m pretty sure I’m about to be kidnapped. Didn’t we already do this?”

 Wynonna returns after several minutes and a few muttered curses, a large box—unwrapped, one side open, like a diorama—in her arms. “First time didn’t really take,” Wynonna says.

“Lucky you,” Waverly says.

Wynonna sets the box on the table, clears her throat, and kneels on the floor in front of the couch, reaching up to gently remove Waverly’s blindfold. “As a classic aughts pop duet,” she agrees, still lightly cupping Waverly’s cheek as the blindfold falls away, the sincerity of her tone a contrast to the words themselves.

“Wynonna, what…” Waverly’s looking at her, and then looking past her.

Wynonna watches Waverly see them, watches confusion shift to understanding: there are eight figures constructed entirely from tampons, seven unfamiliar and one familiar, right in the center of them all. “You _made_ these?” she asks.

“All except that masterpiece in the middle,” Wynonna says, still not looking at them. “There’s no rivaling Kid Waverly’s expertise.”

The longer Waverly extends her silence, the more off-balance Wynonna feels; her uncertainty leads her to fill the space, only a little desperately: “I’d like to say they serve a dual purpose, but, uh—a superglue/lady parts combo kind of sounds like an ER horror story waiting to happen, and, honestly, I think we’re all better off avoiding the Purgatory hospital. I know the real one doesn’t actually hire serial killer revenants to cut out your insides, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find some whacked-out dungeon hiding more top-secret experimental shit.”

Waverly just gives Wynonna a look, and it’s enough to quiet her childish, frenetic nerves. “Please, I’m not shoving your…uh, menstruart up my—oh my God, is that Peacemaker?”

Finally, Wynonna follows Waverly’s gaze: toward the tampon figure she’s created that’s meant to resemble herself, back to back with Mentruangel. Leather jacket drawn on, obviously—and a tiny little sword glued to her hand. “Oh, yep—yep, not just happy to see you.”

Waverly shakes her head, smiles—but she’s examining the rest of the figures with interest. “I didn’t make a you because you’re—you know, Menstru _angel_ , of course. I mean, pretty heavy on the ESP for a kid,” Wynonna continues.

“Lots of tree toppers are angels, Wynonna,” Waverly says.

“Sure…just like you,” Wynonna says, nudging Waverly’s knee with her shoulder, because her sister’s literally an angel, and it hasn’t gotten any less absurd or more obvious. Honestly, it’s probably the only thing the whole damn town can agree on. (Wynonna’s still holding out for the wings to make an appearance.)

Waverly rests a hand on her shoulder, and uses her other one to lightly trace her fingers across the figure farthest from the others. For several long moments, the only sound is the crackling of the fireplace, spilling warmth into the house.

“You gave him wings,” Waverly says, softly. Like it’s something sacred. Maybe it is.  
  
“His elevator ride went straight up,” Wynonna says, like more than anything she needs this one thing to be true. To be certain. “All the way to the top. No stops along the way.” She pauses, barely smiling, adds, “I don’t know what that looks like, but I don’t see how it doesn’t include wings.”

Waverly’s hand squeezes her shoulder; Wynonna leans against her, head pressed to her knee, eye level with the figures. “Definitely,” Waverly says. “This is—wow, Wynonna.”

 “Listen, I know you may not have had ‘tampon diorama’ on your list—or if you did, that was hella specific and wow am I amazing—but I never want you to forget how many people are on your side. Everyone—Nicole, Jeremy, Doc, Robin, Dolls—” Her voice only cracks a little—a victory that she pushes through. “—Nedley—who knew, right? And me. Always me.” She turns so she’s looking up at Waverly, now; Waverly meets her gaze, eyes shining. “You know I’d do anything for you.” Waverly runs her fingers along Wynonna’s cheek, curls a strand of hair behind her ear. “The gun might have made me—heir, once, and whatever I am now, but you’re the team’s heart, baby girl. They stay for you.”

“ _You_ stayed,” Waverly says, so quiet it’s almost unintelligible. Wynonna hears every word. “You stayed here, with me.” Wynonna just waits in the silence, this time, watches Waverly put words to something she must have been keeping quietly tucked away. “I know things are different than they were when you first came back, but—when the curse broke, after Bulshar died, after—everything, part of me wondered if you might…if you’d leave again. If the curse was the only thing keeping you here.”

She swipes at her cheeks a few times, and Wynonna traces gentle circles against her knee. “I know it’s different,” Waverly repeats, like she’s heading off Wynonna’s protest. (Wynonna isn’t sure she planned to make one. Isn’t sure she has any ground to stand on at all.) “I know you love me, I do, but I…I found Doc, one night, after everything. I tried to encourage him to commit to you, or—to convince you to commit to him, whatever.” She shifts, a little sheepish, as she adds, “I might have yelled just a bit. But I…I just thought if I could convince him to stay, and if he could convince you to stay, then maybe it’d be reason enough.” She takes a shaky breath, and Wynonna only then realizes she herself hasn’t breathed once since Waverly began. Her inhale stutters. “I know you love me, I do, it’s just – it wouldn’t be the first time you left me. What if I wasn’t enough? Again?”

Wynonna finds that the hand on Waverly’s knee is shaking, that the nausea she feels threatens to swallow her whole. Her instinct is to reach for the glass she left lying on the table; she does not. “Waverly,” she says, instead, the closest she’s ever come to a vow unrelated to violence, “I’m never leaving you. Not ever. Not again.” Her voice shudders, tremulous, but she continues: “I can’t imagine what my life looks like without you in it. I don’t…want to.”

It’s Waverly who leans down, who presses their foreheads together; it’s Waverly who holds Wynonna’s face in both hands, who wipes softly at the tears Wynonna didn’t realized she’d been shedding. “You are enough. You’re...more than enough. You’re the whole thing. The damn enchilida. You’re the reason that I’m even—” She gestures widely at herself, at the Homestead—their _home_ —at the slowly dying fire and the ornaments on the tree and the dish towels in the kitchen and the pantry stocked with real food and—this, them, solid, stable, together.

“Waverly,” she breathes, like a confession she shouldn’t be making, like a shadow hidden away behind her ribs made suddenly flesh, “I could’ve let them all burn. I had it in me. It’s not what I wanted, and I’m glad it’s not what we got—but when it was you…when Kevin decided your martyrdom would save every single asshole alive…. If there hadn’t been another choice, I would’ve chosen you. I still would.”

It’s a breed of confession she would normally lay at Doc’s feet, where between them there has never been a high horse in sight. A hero would save the world. At the least, a hero would never acknowledge a possibility that precluded saving the world.

But Wynonna Earp is no Superman: she is a girl composed of impulse and contingency plans. Always memorize the escape routes. Always expect the worst. Always be ready to improvise. There’s always another shoe, and it’ll always drop at the worst moment. Blow it up or run like hell.

This was her escape route: Purgatory turned to ash and Waverly left alive, because Wynonna—selfish and wretched and human—could not bear a life without her. Because no one had ever deserved to stay alive as much as her goddamn angel of a sister.

“You’re talking about the _world_ , Wynonna,” Waverly says.

Wynonna presses her lips together, shrugs a shoulder. “That’s the thing. I don’t…care.”

“You do care,” Waverly says, with near-staggering conviction. Wynonna’s startled by what she finds when she meets her eyes again; she thinks Waverly should probably be angry—angry that Wynonna would accept the deaths of everyone they know, of everyone they love, of everyone _Waverly_ loves. Angry that Wynonna would claim agency for a theoretical choice not her own.

If the situation were imminent, Wynonna’s sure she would be.

What Wynonna finds is this: soft, soft eyes, still glistening; a hand curled around Wynonna’s neck, holding her still; a feather-light kiss pressed to Wynonna’s forehead that lingers, warming all the places beneath Wynonna’s skin, burning the shadows alive. And Wynonna's not sure what all of that means, but it feels like learning how to breathe again.

“Jesus, welcome to Siberia,” Wynonna says, covering the hand that’s still holding her neck, which is pretty much frozen solid. “Didn’t you get ‘the warmest blanket ever known to mankind, verified by science’ as a gift?” She leans up to search for it, but Waverly’s hand tightens, suddenly, and—

“Just – stay? For a minute?”

Wynonna doesn’t say anything, after that—just presses a quick kiss to Waverly’s knee, and stays.  
  
  
  
  
  
“We’re alive,” Waverly says, after many long moments—just Wynonna’s chin on Waverly’s knee, Waverly’s fingers curling and curling the hair at the nape of Wynonna’s neck, for maybe minutes or maybe hours or maybe lifetimes. A half-second later, she amends, “Most of us. The world. We survived the apocalypse.”

Wynonna thinks about Dolls—watching them, maybe. And then she thinks: no way, because if whatever’s up there is any reward at all, he’ll finally be taking a break underneath some sun, far away from any forests, with those tiny little grapes and freedom until forever stretching out before him. No more drugs to keep him together, no more murderous organizations, no more demons in desperate need of dental hygiene—just an all-you-can-eat buffet of possibilities.

“You,” Wynonna says.

“So no cold feet? No running away to Greece to drink yourself out of our lives?”

“Not even if there was a big fat wedding,” Wynonna swears. “I, Wynonna Hell-Raiser Earp—”

“Yeah, that’s not real,” Waverly says.  
  
“But shouldn’t it be?” Wynonna says, before clearing her throat. “I, Wynonna Hot Bitch Earp, promise to only drink myself _into_ your life. And maybe sometimes onto a bull, but strictly the fake kind.”  
  
  
  
  
  
“Come here,” Waverly says, making space (a few inches of it, anyway; this couch is no bed built for two) for Wynonna to crawl in behind her.  
  
Wynonna thinks maybe it’s so she can maintain her unimpeded view of the menstruama, and that’s a feeling that spreads through her whole chest, diffuses through her veins, a more powerful victory than sending revenants to hell ever was.  
  
In the end, only a few limbs are bruised in the process.  
  
“You have _Sharpie boots_ ,” Waverly says, like a revelation, as Wynonna settles in. “How did you even—”

“Blood, sweat, and a whole lotta tears, baby girl,” Wynonna says. “Tampons disfigured. Fingernails broken. Peach crop tops sacrificed.”  
  
“Oh no, the one with the fringe?” Waverly asks with genuine concern. “I really liked that one.”

 “Loyal and true,” Wynonna agrees. “Oh fallen comrade, we honor your years of service to showing off my rockin’ abs.”  
  
  
  
  
  
“You should save the world.”

“Like it’s my job,” Wynonna says. “My job without pay or benefits – so like it’s my really shitty summer internship, if this was the longest, coldest summer of all time.”

“You know what I mean,” Waverly says. “If you had the choice—you should choose the world.”

“Maybe,” Wynonna says, wrapping an arm around Waverly’s waist and rubbing her arm, hoping to infuse it with a little warmth. “But I don’t know if you noticed, my MO is less rule following and more a stick-it-the-man, maybe-shoot-him-in-the-face vibe.”

“That’s not a _rule_ ,” Waverly says. “That’s just…”

“What, being a good person?” Wynonna asks. “I’d rather be your sister.”

Wynonna has only one line, and she’s drawn it in the sand, built walls and towers and moats around it, installed a damn smart home security system and lasers and probably a safe to protect it: Waverly fucking lives.

And no amount of doomsday prophecies, or well-dressed women fluent in the languages of smug asshole and high-and-mighty bitch, will stand in the way of that one, absolute truth.

There are other things Waverly needs—other things Waverly deserves—but Wynonna can pair her world down to this couch, to this moment. To Waverly: making her laugh, watching her back, giving her chances she doesn’t deserve. Making her human.  
  
  
  
  
  
“No kicking, Earp,” Wynonna says.

Waverly scoffs, but Wynonna can hear the smile in her voice without having to see it, however tired. “That depends on how loud you plan to snore.”

Wynonna pokes her in the ribs with her free hand, all offense. “Hey. That’s a Bourbon-only affair and you know it.”

“Are you sure you should be lying to an angel?” Waverly asks, and Wynonna thinks how far they’ve come—that it’s something Waverly can say with a laugh bubbling beneath it. “Because I think if we’re keeping Good Place score, that alone will put you at about a negative 5000.”

“How about disrespecting your elders? Especially ones in the form of talented, sword-wielding, hilarious older sisters, known for their quotable puns and profound wisdom?”

“You missed humble,” Waverly says.

“You can’t expect one girl to have everything, that’d just be greedy.”  
  
  
  
  
  
“Hey, Wynonna?” Waverly says; the fireplace has quieted, leaving mere embers in its wake, and Waverly’s tangled her fingers with Wynonna’s.

Wynonna makes a sound she thinks might be a word, or maybe just a grunt with some upward inflection. “Merry Christmas,” Waverly continues, and it’s too sincere not to feel like more—like _you do care_ , like _stay_.

“Merry Christmas, Waves,” she mumbles into the crevice of Waverly’s shoulder, which probably just sounds like someone half-awake and maybe a little hungover. But it feels like all the Christmases they’ve had and all the ones they haven’t; it feels like reaching back to a _Merry Christmas_ text she sent three days late and probably misspelled from the middle of Istanbul and shaking her phone from those stupid, drunk hands, like yelling at a girl who thought the only answer she had was away, like sending her back to the door of Gus and Curtis’ and letting Waverly hug her, and hugging her back, and telling Waverly _Merry Christmas_ to her goddamn face, and maybe never buying another plane ticket again.

As Wynonna hears Waverly’s breathing even beside her, she thinks she’ll probably be sore in at least four different places tomorrow morning, and Waverly will probably wake up shivering, and Wynonna will have way fewer excuses to drink an eggnog breakfast (sometimes hold the egg and also the nog—Waverly’s “that’s a glass of brandy, Wynonna” just shows a remarkable lack of imagination), and way fewer boxes of chocolate to generously take off the hands of the fine folks at the sheriff’s department.

And tomorrow she’ll stay. And the next tomorrow, and the tomorrow after that, until Waverly’s more certain of it than anything else. So Wynonna closes her eyes, thumb running softly along the back of Waverly’s hand, tracing patterns of devotion into her skin.

 

 

 


End file.
